Everything I See Returns to You Somehow
by Medea1313
Summary: Matt visits Claire to get patched up and she helps him face his unresolved grief and anger about his father's death.


Summer is Matt's least favorite season. The persistent stench of Hell's Kitchen — usually ignorable despite his enhanced senses — blooms and widens, carried everywhere on waves of humid air. The warm nights seem to beckon thieves and rapists into being. His costume is unbearable on a hot night; heavy and slick inside with his own sweat. People's tempers are short, violence always dancing around the edges of every encounter. Foggy talks constantly about Landman and Zack's air conditioning.

And then there is his father's ghost, and the ghost of the August night he died in the street like a dog.

Foggy knows the date, of course — looked it up years ago when he finally got Matt to tell him the story, minus a few salient points — but by tacit agreement they do not mention it. Most years Foggy ignores Matt's irritability and Matt tries to direct it away from his best friend, toward more productive and deserving targets, like the thieves and rapists and the window air conditioning unit they scavenged for the office that seems incapable of functioning for more than 45 minutes at a time. This year it seems to spill everywhere though, throwing hot droplets of anger on Karen, who doesn't understand, and Foggy, who pretends not to, and waves upon waves of rage on the petty criminals of Hell's Kitchen, who do not know what devil hit them.

One night the devil comes on so strong that Matt is stupid, and lets himself get stabbed in the leg. After the fight is over — bad guys vanquished — he makes his way to Claire's fire escape, almost hoping someone is there with her so he can ruin both their nights. He feels like ruining things. Her light is on but the apartment is quiet, only one steady heartbeat within, the faint rustling of pages turning. Matt sits on the fire escape for a while, letting his leg bleed sluggishly, the throb of lost blood dulling his other senses for a welcome moment, letting her heartbeat calm his own. His savageness fades a little, but not enough to make him leave her alone. Eventually he knocks on the frame of the open window.

They see each other less often these days because his suit protects him better, and also he has gotten better at what he does, most of the time, and because he tries not to bother her, most of the time. One night in the spring they had been drinking at the same bar, entirely coincidentally, and she had taken him home and fucked him, pretending not to remember his name. He had called the next day but she hadn't answered, and the day after that she'd sent him a text message saying that was just a very nice mistake, and old rules still applied.

Claire lets him inside and hands him a gym bag he left there with shorts and a t-shirt so that he can change out of his costume. He takes a shower without asking permission, cold water sluicing the sweat and blood away, though he can feel that his leg is still bleeding in rhythm with his heartbeat. She's ready when he comes out, the smell of antiseptic in the air. He hears her breath catch when she sees him but her voice is brisk, professional, sit down, hold this, definitely stitches.

As she sews him up she makes a joke about how he won't be able to wear Speedos for a while and he wants to joke back, to let this be light and easy, but it feels like there is nothing light and easy left in him. Her head tilts up; she is probably studying his face. He wonders what she sees there. He wonders, for the first time, if he looks like his father after a losing fight. Though, technically, Matt didn't lose this one.

"What's going on with you?" she asks finally.

"Nothing. Are you done?"

He can feel her lips press together, her pulse elevate with anger. She ties off the last night with a little unnecessary force. "Just need to slap a bandage on," she says.

Despite her words her hands are still gentle as she tapes down the bandage. He imagines her slapping him, the crack of her fingers on his cheek. He has to bite down the urge to say something that would make her do it.

She stands up and snaps her gloves off, walks over to the trash to throw them away. She moves around, cleaning up. She is waiting for him to leave, but his current perverse mood makes him stay.

"It's too hot," he says into the silence, and then wants to slap himself for the inanity of the words.

She shakes her head. "I don't buy it. How can the Devil of Hell's Kitchen be a wimp about a little heat? Too many jokes just waiting to be made. If you can't stand the heat, etc."

She comes close to him, bending to pick up a piece of discarded tape, and he tugs her onto his good knee. Her body is tense, and he can't tell if it's anger or desire or something else entirely. He wants to soothe her, to gentle her wiry arms and compact thighs and the curves of her torso. At the same time, he wants her tight enough to snap. More to the point: he wants to snap her.

"Old rules, remember," she says as he grips her chin and turns it away, opening up access to her throat, the shaved side of her head.

He touches his tongue to her earlobe. "Fuck the old rules," he says.

She draws in a sharp breath but he doesn't know if it's in response to his touch or his words. He presses his mouth against her throat, tongue and teeth against her quickened pulse. She lets out a low, desperate sound, _tcha_ and jerks her head back around. They kiss and then he is pulling her panties down as he turns her to straddle him. She pushes briefly against his newly bandaged wound and a sharp spike of pain shoots up his leg and she breaks the kiss to curse at him for being stupid but he's pushed his gym shorts down to release his cock and she's sinking down onto him now and it's so goddamned hot everywhere their bodies touch, so goddamned hot and tight inside of her.

She braces her knees against the chair on either side of his body and rises above him and his hands dig into her hips and he thinks he'll stop her, he won't let her leave him now, but she's already sinking back down, down and down until he is all the way inside and he wants her to just stay there, to just hold him, but she won't, she's moving again and he can only follow her up with his hips, take her mouth again as she drives herself back down. He bites her tongue, accidentally, and she bites his lip back and every time she sinks down she jars his thigh and he welcomes the pain, it makes him feel alive. Dead people feel nothing. He has this picture in his mind of what his father's body must have looked like in that alley, what it must have looked like to normal eyes, and it rises in his mind now in this moment of supreme heat and movement. Dead bodies are just blank spots in Matt's vision, black holes of cold and quiet.

"Matt!" Claire says his name, urgently, and he knows he has been gone though now he is back. He focuses on her, her face of flame. She is so alive, his Claire. How dare he be thinking of dead things at a moment like this?

"I'm sorry," he says and hears his voice break like a little boy.

Her hands move and he thinks maybe she will slap him but instead she cups his face, gently, so gently. "What is it?" she asks.

He shakes his head. He can't say it out loud, or it will be true. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be here."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out, and then slowly eases herself up and away, leaving him cold and bereft and the world's biggest idiot. She straightens her dress and he waits for her to leave so he can go home and be alone, where he belongs, where he can't hurt anyone else. Instead she takes his hand. "Where else should you be?" she asks. She tugs on him to stand up and pulls him towards her bedroom, pushes him into the bed. She crawls in after him. They sit side by side against her headboard, not touching. She didn't turn on the light, and he can't feel the heat of the lightbulbs above; they are both sitting in the dark.

"That was not okay, Matt," she said, her voice no longer angry but simply stating a fact.

"I know, I'm sorry."

"First of all, if you want to fuck me you should probably be nicer to me. Second, you should ask. And third, you should pay attention when it is actually happening."

He wants to crawl out of his own skin he hates himself so much.

"Please tell me what is going on," Claire continues before he can apologize again, beg forgiveness. "Did something happen to Foggy or Karen? Did Fisk escape? Did you kill someone?"

And then he just says it, because he can't have her thinking he killed someone. "My father died 20 years ago this week."

Her breath huffs out and she reaches over to take his hand. "I'm so sorry, Matt. How did he die?"

"He was a boxer. He'd been throwing fights for the mob to make money. After I lost my sight, I could hear him across the room, talking to them about it. He'd always been my hero. He made me promise not to fight, but I wanted to be just like him anyway. Except he wasn't who I thought he was. But in the end he _was_ a hero. He won a fight he was supposed to lose, a big fight. They caught him, beat him, and shot him in an alley. I heard the gunshot while I was waiting for him to come home. I knew right away what had happened." He'd never told Foggy that part, because it implicated his enhanced hearing.

"Oh, Matt. You were… ten?"

"Ten," he confirms. "And blind for all of three months." She swears under her breath and squeezes his hand. He realizes he is gripping hers back, hard, as if holding on for dear life. "I am so angry with him," he hears himself say. "And I miss him so much. Still."

"Do you think about what it would have been like if he had thrown that fight?" Claire asks.

"All the time. I think… I think he would have gotten old and broken and bitter, and I would have hated him for losing his soul, and for doing it for me, to take care of me. But at least I would still have him."

"Do you think you would still be Daredevil?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Stick, the man who taught me how to use my senses, how to fight — he found me at the orphanage. My father would never have let him train me if he had been alive. But there was always a devil in the Murdock boys, that's what my grandmother used to say. So maybe I would have found a way."

"Do you think he knew what would happen?" Claire asks.

"Yes," Matt says, his voice a raw scrape from inside his chest. "He had to have known. I think — sometimes I think he did it because of me, because I was too much to deal with after the accident. This way it was over, he was free."

" _Fuck that_ ," Claire snarls. "It was not your fault. You are not too much to deal with."

His lips twist at the irony of her saying that, of all people. "Really?"

"Really," she says quietly but firmly. He listens for the lie, listens so hard for it, but it isn't there to be found. He can feel his heart pounding as if he's just finished a fight. How can she say that and have it be true? He is too much for her. He's been too much for everyone else in his life, always and forever. Too much for Stick, who didn't want a son. Too much for his mother, his grandmother. Too much for Elektra (or not enough?), too much for Foggy when he knew everything that Matt was. Too much for Claire, all along she has made that clear. But now she is saying no, now she is denying the fundamental thing Matt knows about himself but has never said aloud before: his father left him because he was too difficult to love.

Matt is crying, and he wishes that he were not. He wishes that he were not holding her hand so tightly and he did not want to believe her so much. "Really?" he says again.

"Really, Matt. I promise."

She leans over and nestles her head into the hollow between his shoulder and neck, strokes her hand up and down his arm. He turns his head and kisses her, less desperately now though he thinks he's still trying to distract himself from this moment, to feel something other than loss and loneliness. Her mouth is sweet and cool and tastes of tears and blood, those fundamental fluids.

"Will you stay?" Claire asks after she breaks the kiss.

"It's too hot," he says dully, though really he would like nothing more than to wrap himself around her and never let go, never be let go.

"I'll turn on the fan," she says. She slips out of his grasp, but it's just to stand up on the bed and pull the cord to set the ceiling fan whirring. The air flows down like a benediction. She strips off her dress and bra and drops them off the side of the bed.

She flops back down on the bed and wraps her naked body around him, careful to avoid pressing on the bandage on his thigh. He slides his arm around her waist, spreads his hand out across the small of her back, pulling her even closer. Her hair smells like citrus and flowers and a tiny bit of hospital antiseptic; it drowns out the smell of the summer streets.

One day when he was a probably five or six there was a heat wave and he couldn't sleep in their tiny, stuffy apartment. His father had set up a makeshift summer camp on the roof and dragged up mattresses and they slept up there a few nights, and sang camp songs before bed and counted stars to go to sleep. The memory surfaces in his mind now, and he can see the stars still and hear his father's laugh.

"Tell me," Claire says, and he does, describing the marshmallows they toasted on a lighter and the constellations his father invented.

"It's been a long time since I thought of that," he admits. "After he died, I taught myself not to remember the good times. It hurt too much that he was gone and I'd never have that again." He strokes his fingers along her spine, slowly, up and then down again. Into the darkness, with her warm all along his side, he can say, "That feels like a betrayal, too, like I betrayed my father by forgetting him."

"It's okay," she says, and how can she sound so sure? "You were just a kid trying to cope. You didn't erase the past or forget him. You just focused on something else for a while. The good memories are still there, when you're ready for them."

"I'm sorry to put all this on you."

She shakes her head against his chest. "Don't be stupid. I said I would be here when you needed me."

He turns slightly so he can kiss her again. Her skin is lightly sheened with sweat and goosebumps under the air from the fan. He needs to do this right. "Is it okay if I take off my clothes too?" he asks.

"That is fine by me."

He smiles briefly against her lips and sits up to take off his shirt, lifts his hips to strip off his gym shorts. She pulls him back towards her, until they are facing each other bodies pressed together. He slides his arms back around her and she runs her foot down his shin, hooks her leg around his. She is open and wet for him but he doesn't want to make the same mistake twice.

"I want you, Claire, so much. But I don't know what I have to offer you right now."

"Matt, this thing between us. It's not a trade. You don't need to give me something to make me care about you. I just do."

It's too hard to really take these words in and think about them too long, even though Matt wants to. He's going to need a while to just sit with them, but now he has other things on his mind. "Can I make love to you?"

She gives a little nervous hiccup of laughter. "I don't know, can you?" A pause and then she adds, "That was a yes, by the way. And thank you for asking."

He huffs out a little breath. "My pleasure." He cups one of her breasts and gently circles her nipple with the pad of his thumb. He finds the spot behind her ear he remembers her liking and gives it special attention and then moves his mouth to her collarbone, then down to her neglected breast. She hums a little deep in her throat. He slips his free hand between her slippery lips, teasing her cunt, finding her clitoris by the way it makes her entire body shake just a little. He plucks and rubs and tugs at it until she shakes a lot.

He is shaking too, by the time he has put on a condom and enters her again. She is molten inside and out. She wraps her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck and he wants only to stay here, hot and safe and still.

But it's all too much and he needs to move, they both need to move. He rises on his forearms, thrusts forward, screwing as deep into her as he can before pulling back. He sets a slow but steady pace, savoring the hot slide and the feeling of reaching the end of her and the sounds she makes when he does. And he is still shaking and she is too, and her hips shudder up to meet him and she bites his shoulder and he can smell tears again amongst the sweat and it's too much, he thinks, he'll hurt her, but maybe he said it out loud because she is whispering, "Just right, just right, oh Matt don't stop, don't ever stop," and then she is coming, her whole body squeezing around him and for that moment he is held, he is safe, he is just right.


End file.
